During the report at the meeting of the final collegium of russia’s Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu reported on the results of efforts to increase the production of military products. For this, a 12-hour work day and a 6-day work week were adopted, and at some enterprises a three-shift work schedule was established, and convicts were involved in the work. A criminal penalty of up to 10 years was also introduced for non-fulfilment of a defense order.
Together with a significant infusion of funds into the military industry, this allowed russia to increase the production of basic types of weapons and military equipment by 30%, and ammunition for missile and artillery weapons and aviation weapons from 69 to 109%.
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But, as Shoigu said, the state defense order for 2022 was completed by 91% as of the end of the year. At the same time, the entire russia’s military industry was transferred to actual manual control with the formation of a decade-long schedule. Production control is carried out by the operative group of the Ministry of Defense, the Military-Industrial Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and representatives of the military industry.
Next year, in order to speed up the production of weapons, russia already has a mechanism in place to transfer the delivery of the most scarce weapons samples from 2024-2025 to 2023. Also, quite favorable conditions have been created for the russian military industry, in particular, more than 830 workers in the industry have been exempted from mobilization. And Vladimir Putin declared that the Ministry of Defense of the russian federation has no financial restrictions at all.
However, in this situation, it would be extremely wrong to take Shoigu's words at face value and they can be considered as extremely embellished. But even in this case, the 30% increase in the number of production of the main types of weapons is in no way correlated with the existing russia’s losses, as well as more than ambitious plans to increase country’s armed forces to 1.5 million and the formation of new units, including artillery divisions, army brigades aviation, bomber regiments, etc. These rates do not correlate even with plans to arm the 200,000-strong reserve.
Despite the fact that he has been the head of the Ministry of Defense of the russian federation for more than 10 years, Shoigu blamed his predecessor Serdyukov. He said that in 2008-2012 military repair facilities were completely destroyed. Therefore, three more repair factories will be created next year, in addition to the two already opened this year, as well as strengthened repair units in the troops themselves.
But, in any case, it is necessary to understand that russia has a significant military industrial complex and the ability to direct absolutely all resources to ensure hostilities, at the cost of the destruction of its own economy, the introduction of food stamps, food distribution and all other measures from the arsenal of the USSR.
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